Worldwide Forum on Education and Culture

Scholars throughout the world have come together again in a second book to share their most successful teaching practices and concerns in the areas of cross-cultural studies and international education. Many disciplines are represented and diverse subjects are discussed: science literacy and worldview perspective; second-language acquisition, student mobility, and international universities; teacher professional development and government programs for disadvantaged children; zoos, industrial paintings, and dress designs as cultural artifacts.

Presentations on these topics are the result of papers given at the annual meeting of the Worldwide Forum on Education and Culture, founded 10 years ago in Rome, Italy. The organization regularly attracts some 100 scholars and practitioners in the fields of education, literacy, language learning, communication and (inter-)cultural studies from all five continents to its annual congress in Rome.

These conferences, as well as this up-to-date compilation of multi-disciplinary academic papers, are meant to highlight the growing need for culturally sensitive education that draws on the strengths of both traditional teaching methods and technology-rich forms of instruction, as well as a host of national and international programs designed to empower teachers and students alike.

Engaged educators, whose research and/or critical discourse in classrooms all over the world has given rise to the present volume, thus hope to share with a wider audience how they impart knowledge, foster skills, and nurture qualities in the next generation of global citizens that will enable them to negotiate their personal and professional lives in our modern world. Even though communities may no longer be characterized by physical distances as barriers to communicative interchanges, perceived and real rifts between different cultures are nevertheless coming alarmingly close to preventing meaningful communication from bringing about true understanding at the individual and societal levels.

The ontogenesis of the Worldwide Forum on Education and Culture is seen here clearly in the perspectives and presentations of diverse academics who are dedicated to teaching and learning toward the greater goal, as Matthew Arnold said in Literature and Science, of “knowing ourselves and the world.”